


Let the sinner choose

by KathyRoland



Series: The Paths We Tread [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, Choices, Gen, Hints of what's to come, M/M, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 04:47:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11028936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathyRoland/pseuds/KathyRoland
Summary: Life is a set of choices.  You can look forward or back, but those choices make us who we are.What were Peter's choices?





	Let the sinner choose

He does not remember his first choice. He is a quiet babe born from the dark into a screaming world with a noose wrapped around his frail neck. He could lean into it and give up without a breath being taken, but he does not. His will is fierce even then and he struggles until the midwife unwraps the cord from his neck. He breathes angry breaths into the world that he now inhabits. That was the first choice. The world cannot stop him from living in it. 

His life is made up of many choices. Some he remembers, others he does not. 

Does he watch his sister be beaten down for not lowering her eyes or does he step in and turn the anger towards his young body? Peter knows pain but he is also very acquainted with fear. Each day one wins out and the other will focus his world. His mother will bring both to him and his sister. 

Does he obey his mother and the bond her alphahood lays over his mind or does he run out into the woods for her to chase down. He has plotted this run many a time in the past. He has thought of a letter he can send out into this world to bring his answer back.

Peter knows he can run fast and his mother has always been fond of a query that doesn’t lay down meekly. For his sister is meek for all that she is strong. She will never rise against their mother. That’s okay, one doesn’t have to challenge from the front. Peter might be young, but he always has been cunning. Once it starts, Peter faces one more choice, a chance to turn back.

Does he stare the hunter in his eyes as he is gunned down, or does he turn and run?

Life one way, death another. Someone’s prey one direction, someone’s lure the other.

Does he watch his mother’s, his alpha’s, blood turn black and bubble from her wounds or does he run for help? His mother is his alpha. The first he has ever obeyed. The first he has been told to love. Does he love her? Does he do this for his sister or for himself? Peter makes his choice.

Peter has always been fascinated by blood and now he knows what it looks like when it turns black. He has run enough for one day.

At age twelve he can choose to bow before his sisters silent condemnation and become someone different or he can look past her and find out how to become her left hand. He has the will to turn into something that she could love. But he prefers the other path.

For the left hand of a pack walks beyond boundaries in service of the pack. They hide in shadows and see that justice and vengeance is dealt out. Peter may have no use for justice but he knows the value of vengeance already. It’s black and it can take awhile to fully be meted out. 

How long had he watched his mother bleed? His sister underestimates him even then.

When he holds the first screaming babe born of his sister he faces another choice. Does he stay and help raise this one and the ones that will follow or will he travel and learn from those contacts he has nurtured outside of his sister’s realm? His brother in law is a weak fool and his sister has no time to devote to her child. She wishes him to stay and protect them.

Peter’s feet have always taken him afar, and his pack bond has never not been stretched to a breaking point. She may be the alpha, but is she his alpha?

When he has learned enough to return home does he return to strengthen the pack or does he horde his knowledge?

Peter has always wanted to be wanted. That is his weakness. That is his dream. To be wanted is to be accepted. If it’s just his skills that he’s wanted for, who else is going to know save himself? So he makes himself indispensable. He flaunts his knowledge and lets his sister come begging for help. She is still meek, for all she pretends. Peter doesn’t play the fool.

Peter grows into his smirk. He grows into his claws and his wit. Peter flourishes as he takes down any and all enemies of the pack he can dream up. For whatever slight insult he can bring forth, he will repay with interest.

When his sister holds him back, will he listen or will he travel in the dark of the night between the shadows the familiar route to a dumping grounds?

Peter is always walking in the woods. 

Word spreads. His pack is to be feared. Those who would prey upon the weak must look otherwhere for many who come into their lands never leave. His sister knows this, but she refuses to acknowledge it. Does she see her mother when she looks at him? Does he remember that night in the woods when he looks back?

Yet for all the choices he has, the hardest is to fight. To fight when his flesh is burning and bubbling. To fight when his pack is dying. Does he fight? Does he die?

To die is to walk away from pain. Peter is quite familiar with pain.

Peter rests from choices for a while.

His next choice is to go to his niece or bring her to him. In one path, he will awaken from this long sleep and his doctors will call forward his family, the survivors of that red and burning night. 

Peter instead chooses to go through the open window. That choice, like so many others leaves red blood dripping from his claws. Peter is done with following alphas. He has been betrayed. The world that he had crafted for himself had burned. Someone in his pack let in the hunters. Was it him, he wonders, did his indifference let in the embers to grow into a blaze? 

Regardless, he knows the hunters who did this. He knows the associates. He knows them like he knows himself. 

Peter has never been one for justice, but he knows the language of vengeance. Vengeance is loud, bloody and painful. It is red dripping from claws and fangs just as much as it is black bubbling to the surface. Peter revels in it and he starts to revel in the screams.

His nephew is there and Peter stays silent. There is a heavy grief in the boy and Peter has no use for soft, broken things like that. That miasma is not something he wishes to entertain until it is of use to him.

Peter uses all his skills and his knowledge then. He wrecks havoc and he brings vengeance. There is no choice there- this is the only path he could have taken. Look back. Look back to that first choice. The babe who once decided to breath will just as certainly continue to fight for its place in this world. 

Did he love his sister and her family? Did he love his mother? He doesn’t know. But he knows violence. He knows plans and plots, and he uses both to make his way.

He knows this may bring his end, but he refuses for even that to stop him.

Peter ran into the woods with his mother chasing him. He walked out of his sisters reach for knowledge. He burned violent and pained as his world was set ablaze. 

Yet a boy stops him.

Does Peter stop at this crossroad, this fork in the road? Or does he saunter by it? Peter has always moved forwards.

This time, there is no blood in his mouth. There is no wrist in his grasp.

He will burn for this choice later in the night. But oh the possibilities…. 

Peter has always had the agency to choose. His path will bring him to his ruin, but it will also bring him beyond his ruin. 

Once more Peter breathes into a world that he should not be breathing.

And once more he runs from that who would call themselves his alpha to a greater danger. Once more he walks away from what others want of him to pursue a higher set of knowledge and skills. And when he comes back, what will await him? Will it be a boy grown, a spark turned into an inferno? Will it be the world fit to tremble at the thought of his pack? He has no alpha (never again) but he knows this boy can be his pack.

Peter breathes and he runs and he chooses. 

What will his next choice be?

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love any feedback or constructive criticism. I have an idea for a second work from Stiles' point of view, maybe set a little in the future from where this ends. Let me know if that would be of interest.


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